title="Go to homepage">Monkey Minion Press

Let me just start with this:

The show was inSANE.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our show experience started off with dinner Friday night with Dan and Dawna of SteamCrow, and Rebecca and James of LunaSea Studios. It was a fun night, good food lots of laughs and lots of great info. After dinner, the 4 of them headed back to their respective roosts and I proceeded to get lost in DT Seattle while trying to get back to the highway to go to our hotel. LOL.

The next morning, we got to the show a couple of hours early to set up. During set up, we had a lot of fellow artists and vendors swing by to look at and comment on the prints and hats we had out. So, that was cool. One of my favorite con moments came during set up, too; As we were putting the finishing touches on our booth, figuring out sign placement, etc., a woman and her young (like, 4 yrs old) daughter came into the hall from the loading doors. Right next the the loading door is where the show’s organizers had placed Stan Lee’s signing area. As the little girl passes this area, she spots Stan’s picture on the curtain behind the table and says, “That’s the SPIDER-MAN guy!!” That’s a kid that’s being raised right.

After that, the show starts. Now, I’ll admit – at this point the show floor becomes a bit of a blur. There were people everywhere. We were down at the end of the hall where the guests were, so there were tons of people near our booth. And it stayed that way pretty much until they closed the doors. We sold out of both of our Star Wars prints by the end of the first day (the Resist print ran out by noon!). Zombie cards were popular, and Ashlie’s cute hats had a lot of attention. At the end of the show, I did a Blue Beetle commission sketch (for which I had to go buy a JLA comic for reference. I never can remember how the lines of his costume go!). After the show, Ashlie and I got some noms (Tasty TASTY Indian food at Pabla Punjab Palace in Seatac) and went back to the hotel, where I did another sketch commission of Crow T. Robot from MST3K. Now I, of course, forgot to get pictures of these pieces, so if you own either of them and a scanner, I’d greatly appreciate you sending me a scan or picture of them.

Sunday started off badly when Ashlie and I went to breakfast at the Pancake Chef in Seatac down the road from our hotel. It was disgusting. We were both queasy and ill feeling afterward (and I love me some greasy spoon breakfast food!). AVOID! Anyway, when we got up, I had to place an order for more Star Wars prints to be picked up that morning. After I dropped Ashlie off, a friend and I went on an odysee to get our prints. Once again, Seattle’s aggressively hostile roads proved to be a foil to my plans and we ended up taking way longer than I wanted to getting back to the show. Oh well. Once back however, the show kicked back into gear. While it wasn’t as busy as Saturday, it was still pretty steady all day. I did a commission of Moon Knight, which was cool. Moony is a character I don’t get to draw nearly often enough. Sunday also found me getting interviewed by Shannon at SeattleGeekly, which was fun. I geeked out over her microphone/recoder gadget for a good 10 minutes. Good times. I got a chance to go wander on Sunday, tho, and I picked up some art books and a batgirl sketch from an artist from Singapore, a hand-pulled screenprint from Steamcrow, and a shirt from dresden codak (who I had never heard of until then).

So all in all it was a great show. Big thanks to Jim, Brian, George and all the rest of the Emerald City Crew. And of course, thanks to the fans who came out and made the show great!

So, I’m a little late. Sorry. This convention season preparation is kicking my ass. But, I’m finally starting to see a little light. We’ve gotten the books done, and will order them soon, I think we have some great booth set-up ideas, and I have some great new prints and products coming down the pipe. Which bring us to today’s art. You’ll notice that today’s work is significantly more finished than a ’sketch’. These are some Star Wars propaganda posters that I worked up last week. I had the idea for the Vader poster months ago, but could never get the image to click in my mind’s eye the way I needed it to to make it work visually. Last week, though I had a brain worm and bam, this came out. So many times, I’ll have a vague idea for a project, and by sketching and reworking I can force the finished piece into some kind of visual appeal by sheer force of will. But not Darth, oh no. I had to walk away from him for months before he’d resolve himself into a coherent form. Bastard. The rebel one was a bit easier. I had the basic concept down in the sketch. I knew who I wanted in it and where I wanted them placed. I came across this coloring technique kinda by accident, and knew that I wanted to use it for this piece.

Anyway, so that’s that. These 2 will first be available at Emerald City Comicon in a little less than 2 weeks (!) time, so be sure to swing by and pick yours up. After that, I may put them on the website and in the etsy store, but it probably won’t be immediate. I’ll also have new buttons, a new zombie print and of course, the new Book, Zombies Next Door. I’ll also be taking art commissions, so stay tuned and I’ll post info about that soon.  Ashlie will be there as well, upping the visual appeal of the booth as well as as selling her awesome hats, wallets and other geeky goods.

Almost directly after ECCC, we’ll be at Planet Comicon in Kansas City, KS. I will also have these there. This is going to be my first show in the Midwest (the home of my forebears), so it should be pretty awesome.

Hey ya’ll. I haven’t been able to post a sketch blog his week because the scanner here at work has crapped out on me and that’s where I usually do my scanning. They are supposed to get it fixed soon, and when they do, I’ll post something up.

D

Hola!

Look it’s still Wednesday! Woot! Didn’t get much time for sketching today, except during my office’s Mandatory Benefits Meeting (bluh). So, here’s what I did instead of listening to the insurance guy drone on and on. Enjoy!

BTW, I’ve uploaded some new t-shirts to my MySorti and Redbubble stores. You should check them out:

http://www.mysoti.com/mysoti/designer/monkeyminion or www.redbubble.com/people/monkeyminion

MySoti’s prices are lower than Redbubble’s, but I haven’t had a chance to evaluate their printing quality, yet.

Yo Dudes and Dudettes!

I’m sorry I forgot to post this up yesterday. Got bogged down with work, and barely got online at all! But, I’m here now!

This is one of my sketch cards from the upcoming “Essence of Fairyland” trading card set from SadLittles . All told, I’m doing 25. As you can see, I have a slightly different take on the idea of fairies.

So, As you probably know, coming to this site, I have an affinity for Zombies. Recently I’ve had an itch to draw some zombie kids, and while I like my normal zombie style, I thought I’d try something a little different for these.

So, this sketch came about by way of a suggestion from twitter user @rhicks (who also has a super-cute webcomic you should totally check out: http://lunasea-studios.com/little-vampires/)

Anyway, I asked for suggestions, she said “Pineapples!” So, this is what came out. Enjoy! Drawn in sharpie, quick & dirty colors in Photoshop. (I only have 1/2 hour for lunch, what do you want?! LOL)

So, as I mentioned before, I’m starting up a new regular sketch feature here on the blog. The sketches may or may not follow a particular pattern, but I will have something up every MWF.

Today’s sketch was done specially for this post. I’ve been re-reading all of the old Usagi Yojimbo collected editions by Stan Sakai from the library recently, and when I needed a subject for today’s post, I couldn’t think of a better one. This sketch took me exactly 1/2 hour to draw.

Yo all!!

So, it’s 2010. Woo! (Where’s my flying car?!)

Great things are afoot in the press-works for this year!! First up, the ‘Press will be benefiting from some feminine attentions soon, as the other half of Monkey Minion Press steps up and starts adding her unique voice to the old blog! Say hi to Ashlie! She’ll be posting some to tell you about all the newer, cooler things we’ve got coming up. Make her feel welcome!

Secondly, I’m going to be starting a thrice-weekly sketch blog here on the main page starting 1/11/10 (OH CRAP! That’s today!!). It will update Mon-Wed-Fri, and will contain a little of everything. Whatever I’m working on at the time can be fodder for it, be it illustration work I’m doing, sketches exclusively for the blog, or random doodles, if it exits my pencil, it may find it’s way here. So, stay tuned! (Today’s an update day!)

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This Wednesday is Dine & Draw! If you’re in the PDX area, swing by The Original Hotcake House at 1002 SE Powell Blvd. around 5:30 pm and see what it’s all about!

YAY! New stuff!

Been a few weeks since I posted last. I apologize. The holidays/end of the year rush have been keeping me on my toes. In the next year, I’m hoping to change some things, though.

First up, I plan to post at least every week if not more. I’d like to start doing a sketch-a-day kind of deal where I can do a post about a sketch I did over my lunch break, or some preliminaries of whatever project I happen to be working on. I’m hoping that this constant sketching and drawing will help me to more easily define a style. I’ll take some suggestions over my twitter account periodically as to what I should draw for your amusement. I plan to start this on January 11, 2010. I’ll make announcements on my twitter and facebook fan page as it comes closer to time.

Second, this year, I hope to start my very own Ustream artcast. I’ve got the account, and I’ve downloaded Camtwist so feasibly I could do digital work and stream it, but I know a lot of people are more interested in my sketch cards and hand drawn art, so I need a camera for that. Perhaps, I’ll run a sale later to get myself a camera? (Wink, nudge)

While I’ve got ya here, I may as well show you this. A little bit of a step-by-step on how I created a recent commission.

Now that you’ve seen that, here’s the final image:

WOO!

Also, just wanted to let you know, Ashlie (the other, less public half of MMP) has gotten our Etsy page up and running! Be sure to go over there and let her know that you appreciate her hard work by buying something or adding us to your favorites! www.etsy.com/shop/monkeyminion